There are still many things available for free in the online world. But things are changing and more and more companies want to earn money in exchange of the contents they deliver. and, obviously, this makes sense: when you fill the tank of your car or go to a supermarket shopping for food, do you really expect gas or food to be free? Of course not.
So today, we'll look at DRM (short for "Digital Rights Management"). For this article, Debra D'Agostino interviewed Scott Burnett, director of marketing for IBM Digital Media. Here are some excerpts.
Q: IBM is taking a lead in developing digital content controls designed to both fend off pirates and attract new customers. Why is this significant?
A: The philosophy behind our digital rights management technology is what we call "super-distribution" -- allowing for content to be wrapped and rights to be ascribed to the use of that content as it travels over the Web -- not just for music, but for any media type.
Q: How do you think this technology will shape the market in the future?
A: Digital content protection in the digital age can provide for whole new opportunities for business. For instance, in the consumer world, there's a thing called super-distribution that is associated with CRM.
Let's say you and I download a piece of content. I download something I paid for and I send it to you. But it has super-distribution rights associated with it. You can access that file, but you may play it and review it once or keep it in order to get a taste for it, and then it allows you to separately license it for your own use.
That's what we call "super-distribution." It's almost like viral marketing in the consumer world. If I am able to provide a solution that allows these peer-to-peer networks to distribute these files and share them and pass them around, but do it all within a secure environment so that the content is really protected and I do have an opportunity for revenue, wouldn't that be something? That's where it's heading.
Q: Is digital content protection something that all companies will be looking at five years from now?
A: I think we are on the cusp of this growth right now. We've seen the pain identified with MP3 files in the entertainment business and what it's done to that industry. That has really lit a fire under other commercial businesses to start thinking about how we are going to allow for distribution of digital content within their world.
As for the future, I think we're going to move toward standards. There needs to be a set of standards, but it's very difficult to work with standards. How do you standardize security? You can go so far as to say there are standards associated with digital rights management, but you can't divulge all the secrets as to how you're securing content because the secret gets out and you've lost.
Coming from a company like IBM, I strongly suggest that you read the whole article.
Additionally, Debra D'Agostino spoke recently with Ranjit Singh, an early pioneer of DRM technology, and wrote a separate article, "DRM: Turning Pirates into Distributors."
Source: Debra D'Agostino, CIO Insight, October 11, 2002
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